One rainy street was much like another, it turned out. It didn't matter where in the world you were, whether it was city or town - it was the same.
People acted the same. They hustled and bustled, tugging coats around them, hoping that collars could be turned up and their necks could be saved from uncomfortable raindrops. Some - prepared ones - had umbrellas, using them as a more sophisticated method (supposedly). They wore smug smirks - until they bumped into one another.
Nobody had perfected walking down a street of multiple umbrellas.
They all rushed, eager to escape...
We are made of fluff and light.
We are made for a continuing struggle to come together in our floating.
When I fell in the garden and you laughed I knew it was not from cruelty, I knew because we are the same you and I. Unable to keep out the beauty that is the terrible world.
We whisper the standing wave form that is the one true light.
We will collapse back upon ourselves and drift into the unrecognizable dawn.
But today
My love
We will kiss with muddy knees and full laughing hearts, and God will smile.
"Travel light."
"But take everything with you."
A murmur of confusion ran across the gathered crowd.
"That will only slow us down!" The young man who had been such a cool head through all of their troubles spoke firmly, with an authority far greater than his age would normally have allowed.
"We can't allow them to find anything which they could use against us." The town drunk retaliated. Or at least, that was all he had been, until the shadow began to cross the land and the war drums had begun to beat once more, since then, he had been...
The dream had been wonderful, yet it would never be real: she knows, even as she wakes, in the taste of bitter almonds at the back of her throat.
She tries to still herself completely so she can relive it in the morning haze. There was a boy-- no, a man-- and he had called her somewhere, taken her somewhere--
She breathes. In, out. In, out. Maybe there's something in dreamcatchers after all.
There had been a man in the dream. That is certain. There had been a man in the dream, and he had--
The fan drones incessantly. She...
I had to bind myself together. I could feel pieces of me falling away, an arm, my left toe, my sense of grace under pressure. My lips struggled to speak as my tongue became unattached, my teeth loosened in my gums. My heart threatened to beat itself right out of my body, and I feared that it actually would.
The curse of unbeing is a cruel one indeed. I thought this as I wound the linen around my eyes, working to keep them in my skull. I wondered what I could have done to anger someone of such great power....
"Rush! Hurry! We must get off the street before anyone realizes we've left. "
"Mummy, why?"
"Because I said so."
"Because he's bleeding, Mum? Is that why?" I grasped the edge of her suitcase, let it carry me along, my feet nearly leaving the ground. Breathless, visions of things much different from sugar plums. Blood. Screams, a distant siren, the smell of cordite. Done. Rush! Move! NOW! Hungry, what, no time. Leave the cat.
Down the stairs, falling, falling, falling out onto the cobblestones. Scent of mum's sweat mixed with tobacco, and the stench of death. Train sounds. Off to...
Sal couldn't breathe. And he couldn't stand running through a huge group of people. They didn't have much to hurry for. Some of them were walking calmly to trains, while others were meeting thier loved ones after riding in on one.
He was the only idiot in the place litteraly pushing through people. He would have to apologize to the old lady with the walker he knocked flat on her butt later. Right now, Karen was his main focus.
Karen. She left Salvadore a message on his answering machine. Something about leaving him, because she couldn't keep playing house anymore....